Interesting Facts About Mercury Planet

At 58 million kilometers distance, Mercury is closest planet to Sun.  Due this much proximity, mercury’s orbit is very much stretched into a long elliptical shape. Other important facts about mercury are as follows:

• Mercury takes 88 Earth days to complete one revolution around sun, however, it takes 59 Earth days to complete one rotation.
• It’s surface is covered with deep craters, separated by plains and huge banks of cliffs.
• Mercury’s most notable surface feature is an ancient crater called the Caloris Basin, which is a huge pit for such a small planet.
• Mercury’s very thin atmosphere is made primarily of sodium, potassium, helium, and hydrogen.
• On its day side (the side facing the Sun), temperatures reach 430°C ; on its night side, the heat escapes through the negligible atmosphere, and temperatures plunge to -170°C.
• Mercury is so close to the Sun, the glare of the Sun makes it difficult to observe Mercury from Earth. Mercury is therefore visible only periodically, when it is just above the horizon, for at most an hour or so before sunrise and after sunset.
• It also moves more quickly across the sky than the other planets. Even when Mercury is visible, the sky is often so bright that it is hard to distinguish it from the background sky. TH
• NASA’s Mercury-orbiting probe, Messenger, has confirmed a vast amount of ice at the north pole on Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. Mercury’s north pole is always in shadows. The South pole is also believed to harbor ice but there is little data to support it.
• Messenger which was launched in 2004 orbits much closer to the north pole than the south.